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Section 198ZA: Penalties for failure to provide information

Communications Act 2003 · 2003 c. 21View on legislation.gov.uk

Part 3: Television and Radio Services ETC — Chapter 1: The BBC, C4C , S4C and the Gaelic media service

This section applies if—

under a power conferred by virtue of section 198(2A), OFCOM require a person other than the BBC to provide information, and
OFCOM determine that there are reasonable grounds to believe the person has not provided the information.

OFCOM may give the person a notice which sets out the determination and specifies—

what information the person must provide,
the time within which the person must provide it,
a penalty that OFCOM may impose if the person does not provide it, and
a period in which the person may make representations.

OFCOM may impose a penalty on the person if they fail without reasonable excuse to provide the information in accordance with the notice.

The penalty may include an amount for each day the person fails to provide the information after the time required by the notice.

The penalty in respect of any notice—

must not be more than OFCOM determine to be proportionate,
must not be more than the penalty specified in the notice, and
must not be more than £250,000.

OFCOM may withdraw a notice without imposing a penalty, and that does not affect the power to issue a further notice in relation to the same information.

OFCOM must publish and keep up to date a statement of their proposed approach to issuing notices and imposing and recovering penalties under this section (subject to the guidelines published under section 392).

About this text

This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.